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	Programme Notes A - M


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Programme Notes A - M

After Concord (from 'Lucifer's Banjo and other pieces for piano')

This tiny chorale was written shortly after a visit to the Massachusetts town of that name, famous for having been home to the 19th century transcendentalists Thoreau and Emerson. In particular, it is a response to a visit to Walden Pond, then covered in ice and snow.

American Rounds

American Rounds was commissioned by the Schubert Ensemble with funds provided by South West Arts, The David Cohen Charitable Trust and the Schubert Ensemble Trust. It was completed in May, 1998.

Scored for piano quintet with double-bass, it is the latest in a series of pieces to explore the qualities and characteristics of different genres of folk music. Its most obvious ancestors are Down-Hollow Winds and Hootenanny; but two of its movements are actually re-composed and expanded versions of two of the Three Little Folk Games (1995) for piano. Each of the four movements of the work concentrates itself on a tiny amount of highly-characterised musical material derived from the scales, gestures and performing practices of different American folk idioms. The four movements are headed:

1. Vigoroso
2. Grazioso, semplice
3. Andante
4. Pesante, vivace

Back to Ground

Despite being the 'musician' in the family, it wasn't me but my brother who first became interested in 'Early Music'. This was almost entirely due to the recordings of David Munrow, the sound of which was frequently in my ears as a result. I also remember hearing many of the 'Pied Piper' broadcasts Munrow made in the 1970s. I don't think any of this influenced my composing until now, but the memory of Munrow's trailblazing work and the subsequent blossoming of early music-making is very much a conscious component of Back to Ground.

The piece was written for John Turner, and is scored for recorder, cello, and harpsichord. I decided very early on to foster (rather than suppress) the obvious connections this ensemble has with Baroque and pre-Baroque music, and I think of the result as a personal response to this repertoire: not an imitation or 'pastiche' of its language but an explanation of the ways in which its expressive syntax coincides (or competes) with my own.

It is cast as a passacaglia, an extended set of constantly-evolving variations on a double-ground; hence the title, which is also intended to convey my feeling that employing contrapuntally rigorous devices represented a kind of compositional 'back to basics' - a high-fibre technical diet. Bach's organ works cast in this form constitute yet another personally retrospective element of Back to Ground: I must have worn out dozens of needles playing them on record when I was 10 or 11.

Bluegrass Variations

Bluegrass Variations was commissioned by the City of London Carl Flesch International Violin Competition for performance during Stage 1 of the 1988 Competition.

I gave quite a bit of thought to the idea of a 'competition' piece, and eventually decided that, rather than finding technical challenges for the performers (of which they would have plenty elsewhere), I would write something that was stylistically challenging.

While I was in America the sound of Country and Bluegrass music was very much in my ears; the role of the violin and its own unique style in this music seemed central, and Bluegrass Variations is really an evocation of this style, complete with melodic glissandi, pentatonic scales, open string drones and banjo imitations.

Capistrano Song

Capistrano Song was written in the spring of 1984 for the clarinettist Beth Wiemann. The title stems from an American saying 'when the swallows return to Capistrano'. The saying is intended to convey a sense of inevitability since on the same day each year, having migrated further south for the winter, flocks of swallows return to the small Californian town of Capistrano; and their return is heralded by the ringing of the church bells. Capistrano Song was written in response to this image.

The work is essentially a long, ever-climbing clarinet solo, accompanied (or rather 'enhanced') by a tape part. The composer would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Paul Lansky's 'MIX' programme used to generate the tape part on the IBM 3081 computer at Princeton University.

Carillon

Carillon was commissioned by the Brighton Festival for the Composers Ensemble, and is scored for clarinet, vibraphone and piano. It was written in October 1997 and premièred at the Brighton Festival in May 1998.

Carillon is a short, fanfare-like prelude with a quiet extended coda. As its title implies, the musical substance of the piece derives from the sound of pealing bells; this is obvious from the extensive use of bell-like attacks on the vibraphone and piano along with reverberation created by the use of the sustaining pedals on both these instruments. But bell-ringing also influences the melodic and harmonic character of the piece, in particular through the pervasive use of a simple, descending scale. The rhythmic 'kinks' and syncopations that usually articulate these descending lines are inspired by the observation that, in the entire history of bell-ringing, no group of bell-ringers has, it seems, ever managed to ring in an even rhythm.

Cavalcade

I had two things in mind while thinking about the piece. First, I had been obsessed with a number of fanfare-like musical gestures for some time and had no idea how to put them together in the context of a complete composition. Second my admiration for, and (for a while first hand) experience of the Hampsire County Youth Orchestra's unique energy and youthfulness. When Edgar Holmes approached me with the idea for an `upbeat opener' for the orchestra's 1986 season I knew I had found a solution for the first, and an outlet for the second.

The piece is dedicated to Edgar Holmes and the orchestra with affection, with gratitude for my years in the group, and in recognition of the unique opportunities they offer so many young Hampshire musicians.

Chaconne

Written in 1990 for the oboist Nicholas Daniel, Chaconne is a brief, virtuosic solo work cast in the Baroque chaconne form - a set of variations on a constantly repeated harmonic pattern. Although not modelled after Bach's famous solo violin chaconne, the work nevertheless shares with that masterpiece the idea of creating harmonic identity and movement from a solo line, without the benefit of chords. So in each of the highly characterised variations, the simple, fairly triadic harmony is arpeggiated, decorated, extended and developed, but never to the extent that its original flavour is lost.

Clarinet Quintet

The Clarinet Quintet is, in one sense, a spin-off from my opera, Craig's Progress. In that work, one of my aims was to create a musical language that would evoke the highly gestural, rhythmically fluid music of the animated cartoon 'greats' - I was thinking particularly of Tom and Jerry and the Warner Brothers canon.

In the quintet, this kind of language is separated from any visual dimension: there aren't any cartoons or opera singers to watch while you listen to it. So you have to provide your own storyboard which will no doubt differ considerably from the one I had in mind while composing the piece.

It won't comes as a surprise that the work is virtuosic, quixotic and entirely unpredictable in its course of events.

The Clarinet Quintet was commissioned by the Vale of Glamorgan Festival with funds provided, in part, by the Arts Council of Wales, and was completed in April, 1995.

Concertino

Concertino was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta and was completed in 1983 – the first performance taking place later that year during the ‘Zig-Zag’ series at IRCAM in Paris.

The initial impetus for the work cam from an expression Charles Ives used: “…a kind of furious calm” – although as it turned out, the piece is neither of these things. The paradox does serve, however, to point up its most important feature: long sustained melodic lines embedded in a frenzied, if delicate, decorative haze.

The suppressed, accumulated energy of this ‘haze’ eventually forces the melody to take on more rigid characters – rather like sand flung centrifugally against the walls of its spinning container. By the end of the piece the lock-alternation of these characters becomes all-important although one of them (using trombone, piano and maracas) has been there all along without change.

The climax of the piece comes with a dance-like pot-pourri of the principal melodic ideas. A quiet coda follows, built from wisps of decorative activity and bell-like octaves, until finally, no longer able to sustain itself, the texture evaporates into thin air.

Concertino for Piano and Chamber Orchestra

The concertino was completed during the summer of 2002, to a commission from Chetham's School of Music.

It started life conceived as a sequence of etudes, all nocturnal in character, in each of which the piano would dictate the course of events and play almost continuously. This plan became modified, however, and the work in its final form is made up not of etudes, but what I think of as 'genre' pieces. There are plenty of features linking the movements. For instance, the first two share similar material built out of chains of thirds, as well as the same formal idea of alternating between two seemingly unrelated thematic strands; in the case of the first movement, waltz-like and march-like metres, in the second flowing lines and static chords. But ultimately the movements are designed to contrast and complement one another.

The first, Waltzes and Marches, constantly alternates these two dance genres, sometimes in surprising ways, sometimes so that their differences become indistinct. (This was an idea suggested by Schumann, who does something similar - and much better - in the last movement of his piano concerto.)

The second movement, Nocturne, is an adaptation of an earlier solo piano piece, Nathaniel's Mobile, which tries to suggest the gentle movement and reflected light of a child's mobile, sometimes delicately flowing movement, sometimes static chords.

The last movement is a frenetic (although quite light-textured) Toccata in which the piano plays rapid figuration between the hands almost continuously throughout, ending with a quiet little chorale followed by a last upward flourish and a bang.

Dirty Beasts

Dirty Beasts was written in 1988 in response to a commission from Aquarius. It consists of settings of three children's verses by Roald Dahl for a reciter, accompanied by a wind quintet and piano.

The verses, taken from Dahl's collection Dirty Beasts, all exhibit the writer's fine tastes in the macabre and the grotesque: they are centred around animal characters (although in the case of "The Tummy Beast" the beast remains unseen), and all are to do with eating (and what is eaten, as you will see, is very much to the point).

The three verses are connected by short interludes, and are entitled as follows:

1. The Pig
2. The Tummy Beast
3. The Crocodile

Down-Hollow Winds

Down-Hollow Winds is not so much concerned with instrumental style as with harmonic and rhythmic style and in particular the pentatonic mode, common to folk music the world over. It is divided into five movements:
Pesante - Vivace - Lontano - Energico - Piacevole
each of which explores different and sharply-characterised aspects of the same, simple material. The musical ideas themselves actually come from another piece of mine, O Rio, which is a large orchestral work; but not large enough to give them the time I felt they deserved.

'Down-Hollow' is a colloquial American expression which implies an isolated, back-woodsy degree of countrification.

The piece was commissioned by the Music at Leasowes Bank festival for the Haffner Quintet, with funds provided by West Midlands Arts, and was completed in March, 1991.

Fin de Siècle

Fin de Siècle was commissioned by the English Northern Philharmonia with support from Yorkshire and Humberside Arts and was completed in the autumn of 1996.

Cast as a seven-minute prelude for orchestra, it is largely slow, lyrical in tone and is built in simple, circular melodic fragments. Intended neither as a lament nor an eulogy for the end of our own century, Fin de Siècle is, rather, a response to the flavour and character of fin de siècle music and art of a century ago: a quiet remembrance of things almost too long past to be remembered at all.

Fixed Doubles

Fixed Doubles was commissioned by the Royal Northern College of Music, and was completed in the summer of 1989.

As a student at the college, I attended all the concerts given by the symphony orchestra as well as many of its rehearsals. This was good training. As a result, I became familiar with a large chunk of the orchestral repertoire (I particularly remember one frighteningly exciting performance of the Rite of Spring) and learned more about how an orchestra works at that time than at any time since.

Fixed Doubles is an energetic and joyful response to those years at the RNCM. Essentially, it is an 8-minute moto perpetuo; the pulse and movement rarely slacken. Against this, the ideas flit in and out of one another, almost always in canon, contracting and expanding, and inhabiting a fairly static harmonic space - they are circular, immobile in this sense - 'fixed'. 'Doubles' hints strongly at the playful nature of much of the music. Eventually, there is nothing to do but stop, on a loud, brassy major 2nd.

The piece is dedicated to two close American friends, David Rakowski and Beth Wiemann, on the occasion of their wedding.

From an Antique Land

From an Antique Land was commissioned by the School of Wind and Percussion at the Royal Northern College of Music and was premièred there in May 1982, conducted by Siân Edwards. It is scored for woodwind, brass, percussion and solo piano.

The title comes from Shelley's poem Ozymandias, which concerns a traveller 'from an antique land' who tells of the ruins of a great statue on the desert - the only remains of a once-mighty king and his cities - whilst all around the ruins 'the lone and level sands stretch far away'.

From an Antique Land is a musical response to the powerful irony and imagery of the poem and attempts to evoke, through stark musical contrasts, the polar opposites of an ancient, tyrannous culture and the quieter, yet infinitely more enduring power of natural forces.

The structure of the piece stems from bold juxtapositions of desperate musical 'fragments', and is cast as a series of episodic encounters between them. The music gradually coalesces into a grand, climactic tutti section before a long, slow, peaceful chorale leads it gradually into the distance and out of earshot. Throughout, the concertante piano part acts in a sort of narrative role, connecting disjointed sections and providing a form of commentary on the proceedings.

Going With the Grain

Going With the Grain was commissioned by Lontano with funds provided by Greater London Arts, and was completed in November 1991. It was conceived as a mini concerto for solo marimba and small ensemble in order to repay an old debt to the percussionist, Martin Allen, who taught me practically everything I know about percussion instruments during our days together at the Royal Northern College of Music.

I see the piece as a study in cooperation. Most concertos explore a range of different relationships between soloist and orchestra - the 'one' and the 'many'. Going with the Grain tries to stick to one - a harmonious, equal sharing. At no point does the ensemble really 'challenge' the marimba's prominent role; rather, it complements, accompanies and imitates it. Occasionally it is forced to try and be a kind of 'giant' marimba itself. This extreme kind of treatment, I hope, lends the piece a certain mellow, relaxed, distant quality.

It is cast in three movements. The first is by far the most energetic and spunky although its repetitive, syncopated patterns constantly interact with lyrical, modal lines reminiscent of folksong. The second, entitled Mandolin Lullaby, is nocturnal in character and exploits both the dark, rich sound of 'rolled' marimba chords and more delicate pizzicato textures. At the end of this movement is a strange, quiet little dance, seeming to come from nowhere and stopping abruptly. This 'coda' is really an introduction to the last movement, Lontano, which is a short, hushed moto perptuo, recapitulation elements of the first movement, and eventually unravelling itself into a slow, sad chorale.

Hootenanny

In the pre-war years, and particularly during the Depression, the folk movement in the United States was strongly allied to the political left. The lyrical content of folk songs of that period (and beyond) routinely dealt with the plight of factory workers, itinerant farmers and the economically oppressed. Hootenannies were political fundraising events involving music, dancing and oratory and became important platforms for folk artists such as Woody Guthrie and, later, Pete Seeger.

Hootenanny retrospectively celebrates this rare alliance; it also adds to a number of works of mine which draw on American folk and performance idioms.

It was commissioned by the BBC for Orkest de Volharding and was premièred by them in Amsterdam in January, 1995.

Jazz Machines

Jazz Machines was originally destined to form part of a programme of my music in the 'Summerscope 1990' festival, which was to have been directed by Michael Vyner. Tragically, Michael died before the plan came to fruition; so I feel that this note should acknowledge both his hand in commissioning the work for the London Sinfonietta and his kind support over a number of years.

The unusual scoring of the piece was largely due to practicalities: it was drawn from the other pieces of mine destined for that same 'Summerscope' programme.

For me, there's a nice irony in the title since jazz (of all kinds) is inherently spontaneous, improvisatory - and un-mechanical (or so we are usually led to believe). I've tried to create a 'machine-jazz'; jazz that machines might play, on the sly, when we're not listening. The references to numerous jazz styles, from the generalised (bebop?) to the particular (Gil Evans?) are fairly obvious, but are filtered through a somewhat bizarre series of rhythmic and harmonic progressions so that their meaning changes, their expression is altered. Although for the most part fast, syncopated, and employing the full ensemble, the music of Jazz Machines often fragments and splinters into solos or duets, rather in the manner of 'jazz breaks'. Perhaps the most notable example is the strange, disembodied central episode for viola and piano, later joined by the 'cello.

The piece has a close affinity with an electronic work of mine, Night Machines (1987) which suggested many compositional ideas to me through computer-sequencing that I've since been trying to incorporate into 'acoustic' instrumental writing. Jazz Machines certainly represents the most blatant example of this to date.

The work was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta with funds provided by the South Bank Centre. It was completed in January 1990.

Lovesongs Waltzes

Lovesongs Waltzes was completed in April 1997 and was commissioned by the Machynlleth Festival with funds provided by the Arts Council of Wales. It was premiered at the 1997 festival by Emma Johnson and Martin Roscoe.

The title is a clumsily literal translation of Brahms' Liebeslieder Waltzer and the work is, in part, a response to Brahms' wonderfully subtle invocation of the waltz in those pieces. However, like the Brahms, and like other pieces (such as Ravel's La Valse) which are 'about' dance rather than to be danced to, Lovesongs Waltzes is abstract music in which the characteristics of the waltz (the variety of triple metres, the rhythmic and gestural syntax of the dance) are immanent, not explicit. The piece, like its ancestors, is in a way nostalgic about a lost - but at the time culturally important - dance form as well as reflective of the music of a century ago as a new millenium approaches.

Lucifer's Banjo

Etude for repeated notes and chords

This etude exploits the piano's capacity for percussive repeated attacks to create an energetic three-minute toccata. The title is intended to convey the somewhat 'diabolic' quality of much of the music's gestural language as well as its attempt to evoke the dark twanging of imaginary plucked or strummed strings.